Apache Tomcat virtual directories. Redirects to wrong location. ColdFusion Lucee - apache

Question

I am trying to get a local version of Lucee ColdFusion running my app - which resides as two directories... the main app, and the client custom code.
To that myDomain.com should pull from the 'site' and myDomain.com/app/ should pull from the app.
I can be logged in to my site, and pulling data via includes etc, but if I try to browse (or make a call to) /app/cfc/myCFC.cfc ...
the behavior redirects to the 'root' and logs my app out.
my server XML looks like this
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<Server port="8005" shutdown="SHUTDOWN" >
<Listener className="org.apache.catalina.startup.VersionLoggerListener" />
<Listener className="org.apache.catalina.core.AprLifecycleListener" SSLEngine="on" />
<Listener className="org.apache.catalina.core.JreMemoryLeakPreventionListener" />
<Listener className="org.apache.catalina.mbeans.GlobalResourcesLifecycleListener" />
<Listener className="org.apache.catalina.core.ThreadLocalLeakPreventionListener" />
<Service name="Catalina" >
<Connector port="8888"
protocol="HTTP/1.1"
connectionTimeout="20000"
redirectPort="8443" />
<Connector port="8009"
protocol="AJP/1.3"
redirectPort="8443" />
<Engine name="Catalina"
defaultHost="127.0.0.1" >
<Host name="local.dev.myDomain.com" appBase="webapps" >
<Context path="/" docBase="C:\wwwroot\site" />
<Context path="/app" docBase="C:\wwwroot\app" />
</Host>
</Engine>
</Service>
</Server>
If it helps to understand; this is a legacy app running in production on Windows, Apache 2.2 and ColdFusion 11. I have the app aliased in Apache 2.2 like this:
Alias /app/ C:/wwwroot/app
I am trying to evaluate Lucee to see if our app will work on that platform without too many changes.
One noticeable difference, due to using the built in webserver, is the port 8888
so the actual url looks like: mydomain.com:8888/app/cfc
I do not know if this is the problem or something else. If I cannot find a solution, I'll install Apache 2.2 and match the config
Any help is greatly appreciated - jp
NOTE: I just changed the host in this txt to accurately mimic my setup - if that makes a difference.
local.dev.myDomain.com (only the 'myDomain' is specifically my domain, not literally myDomain)